Trump Weakens Protections of ACA

New York Magazine had an article explaining how Trump continue to sabotage ObamaCare which will cause increased premiums with less access to health care. Not a good deal.

“The president’s suspension of Cost Saving Reduction reimbursements for insurers is one example. The administration’s sabotage of the Obamacare enrollment effort (so important in attracting as broad a risk pool as possible) is another.

But now the administration’s Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has issued a new proposed rule that seeks to indirectly accomplish what nearly all the Obamacare repeal-and-replace bills addressed directly: the weakening of Obamacare’s “essential health benefits” requirements for insurance plans in the individual and small-group marketplaces.”

The ACA defined ten “essential health benefits” all health plans it covered must supply including a “benchmark plan” from the employer-supplied insurance market to serve as a model. Trump proposes to let states do is patch together a model from different plans from anywhere in the country that have at least 5,000 enrollees. The rule would allow insurers to shift benefits across the 10 categories — not just within them. In doing so, insurers could potentially make plans less appealing to someone they don’t want to cover — like someone with pre-existing conditionslikediabetes or arthritis.

A separate part of the proposed rule would let states waive what is known as the Medical-Loss Ratio limitation imposed by Obamacare: the requirement that 80 percent of premiums be spent on actual medical care rather than, say, advertising. It’s hard to see how that will operate to help consumers rather than insurers.